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Abstract
A brief synopsis of a research article, conference presentation, or poster, presented before the main text to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper’s purpose.
Accepted author manuscript (AAM)
Also known as a post-print, it is the peer-reviewed, final version of an article prior to publication. This is not the same as the publisher’s PDF.
Article processing charge (APC)
A publisher’s fee for covering publishing costs such as those associated with editorial and peer-review processes. A consequence of payment of an APC is gold (immediate) open access to the research paper.
Citation metrics
Statistics collected on the number of times a research article has been cited by other research articles.
Conflict of Interest
Journals ask authors to report potential conflicts of interest to ensure transparency of their manuscript. These conflict of interest/s may include financial (e.g., employment, consultation) and personal relationships, and/or other conflicts. Authors can disclose those in their cover letter and/or on the manuscript submission form. Even if there is no conflict of interest, it needs to be clearly stated on these documents.
Corporate Author
An organization, an agency, an institution, or a corporation identified as the author of a work.
Date of Acceptance
The date an article is accepted, after peer review, for publication by a journal.
Editing
The process of correcting and revising a document in terms of language, grammar, and presentation, to make it fit for publication.
Full text
A complete document contained in a database or on a website. (Note: Illustrations and diagrams may be omitted from a full-text document.) Some databases search full-text documents; others search only the citation or abstract. In some cases, researchers can set their own preferences.
Green open access
The author makes a version of a research output freely available via an institutional or subject repository. Publishers stipulate the version of manuscript that can be self-archived and the length of embargo period following publication before the paper is made open access.
Impact factor
A measure that attempts to represent the relative importance of a journal within a field based on the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. Journals with higher impact factors are deemed to be more important than those with lower ones.
Institutional repository
An online archive of an institution’s scholarly outputs. The collection can include publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and book-sections, technical reports, working papers, monographs, conference presentations, audio and visual materials or any other research content that has some scholarly value.
Journal
A type of periodical usually sold by subscription and containing articles written for specialized or scholarly audiences.
Metadata
Data that describes other data. For items in open access repositories, this usually consists of a full bibliographic reference, abstract, keywords, and similar information.
Open access journal
A journal whose content is freely available online and where user rights and the terms of copyright are defined.
Plagiarism
The act of copying the words, thoughts, or ideas of another author and using it in one’s own work, without citing or crediting the original author.
Publication / Publishing ethics
A set of principles and practices that are followed to ensure that the publication of scholarly research is conducted with integrity and without any misconduct.
Refereed publication
A publication for which every submission is screened through a peer review process.
Research article / paper
A scholarly or scientific paper written to compile the findings of a study and published in a journal within a specific academic discipline.
Retraction
A journal’s disavowal of a paper that it has published in one of its earlier issues, typically done when the findings in the paper are no longer considered trustworthy due to scientific misconduct or error, when the paper is found to have plagiarized previously published work, or when the paper is found to have violated ethical guidelines.
Scientific editing
The process by which an editor with expertise in the relevant scientific discipline prepares a scientific manuscript for publication in a journal, by correcting the mistakes, improving the flow of the text, and offering suggestions to the author.
Target Journal
It is not really a standard term, but researchers use it quite often to refer to the journal that they select for their manuscript submission. The target journal is usually selected based on the journal’s aim and scope, target audience, impact factor, etc.
Academic editing
The process of preparing an academic or research manuscript for publication in a journal, by correcting mistakes, improving the flow of the text, and offering suggestions to the author.
Annotated bibliography
A list of sources that gives the publication information and a short description or annotation for each source. Each annotation is generally three to seven sentences long. In some bibliographies, the annotation merely describes the content and scope of the source; in others, the annotation also evaluates the source’s reliability, currency, and relevance to a researcher’s purpose.
Case study
A descriptive, exploratory, or explanatory analysis of a person, group, or event within the social sciences and life sciences; in the medical sciences, sometimes used interchangeably with case report.
Citation trail
The network of citations formed when a reference work refers to sources that in turn refer to other sources. The process used by researchers to track down additional sources on a topic is sometimes referred to as following the path of a “citation trail” or “citation network.”
COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)
A non-profit organization whose mission is to define best practices in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors, publishers, etc., to achieve this.
Corresponding Author
The author who (in addition to contributing to the technical content of the paper) is responsible for submitting the paper to the journal for publication, managing all communication and correspondence regarding the paper, and handling revisions and re-submissions.
Digital object identifier (DOI)
A persistent code assigned to online or digital material. The DOI can be entered into a website called a DOI resolver or used in a database to retrieve an item.
Embargo
A period during which access to scholarly work is restricted to those who have paid for access. Once the embargo period ends, an article can be deposited in a repository (if permitted by the publisher).
Gold open access
Publishers make research articles immediately and freely available from the point of publication, and usually apply an article processing charge (APC).
h-index
An index that aims to measure the research productivity and impact of a scientist or scholar, based on the set of the scientist’s or scholar’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
IMRAD
An acronym for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion—the widely recommended manuscript structure for original research articles in scientific journals.
Instruction to Authors
There is a section on the journal website that provides instructions on how to write and submit your manuscript and lists all the required documents. It is important because if the submission is not following the instructions, it may result in quick rejection or give a bad impression to the editor that the author(s) have not read the guideline carefully.
Keyword
A word used to search a library database, a website, or the Internet. Keyword searches locate results by matching the search word to an item in the resource being searched.
Online Submission
Almost all journals require authors to submit their work online. There were days when author(s) needed to mail out 5 hard copies of the manuscript to the journal. However, that is not the case now. The online submission system requires the corresponding author to create an account and follow the steps to enter the required information and upload documents. The link to online submission is available on the journal’s website.
Open access license
The license outlines what a person may do with a third-party copyright work. An example of an open licence is a Creative Commons (CC) license, which combines 4 basic elements: the attribution, the derivatives, the commercial use, and the ‘share-alike’ principle.
Pre-print
The first draft of an article, before peer-review, possibly even before any contact with a publisher.
Publisher’s PDF
The final published version of an article, including the publisher’s copy-editing, proof corrections, layout, and typesetting.
References
In scholarly writing, a list presented at the end of a research/academic manuscript, detailing the sources (books, papers, presentations, letters, etc.) cited within the document so as to enable the reader to locate and verify the sources used.
Research question
The central question (or hypothesis) that a researcher seeks to address, which will then define the specific objectives that the study will address.
Review article/paper
An article or paper describing published research on a particular topic. The purpose of a review article is to select the most important publications on the topic, sort them into categories, and comment on them to provide a quick overview of leading scholarship in that area. Published articles often include a literature review section to place their research in the context of other works in the field.
Self-archiving
The process of depositing your research output to a repository along with bibliographic metadata.
Trade publications
Periodical publications, such as magazines or newsletters, covering specialized news and information for members of a particular profession or industry. Unlike scholarly journals, trade publications do not include in-depth research articles.
Acceptance rate
In journal publishing, the number of manuscripts accepted for publication is compared to the total number of manuscripts submitted to the journal in one year.
APA Style
A set of editorial and stylistic guidelines on writing and publishing in the social and behavioral sciences, as detailed in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Citation management software
A computer program that stores bibliographic references and notes in a personal database and that can automatically format bibliographies, reference lists, or lists of works cited based on a particular documentation style (MLA, APA, Chicago, CSE, for example).
Citation
A reference to a published or unpublished source, typically denoted through an alphanumeric expression (e.g., Jones 84) embedded in the body of an academic text, for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others concerning the topic being discussed.
Copyright Transfer
After the manuscript is accepted by a journal, authors are required to submit the copyright transfer form. By signing the form, each author agrees to transfer all copyrights of the work to the journal.
Database
A collection of information organized for retrieval. Databases may contain bibliographic citations, descriptive abstracts, full-text documents, or a combination.
Editing Certificate
A certificate issued by an editor or editing company, certifying that a particular document or manuscript has been edited to ensure correct grammar and language; typically sent by an author to a journal or publisher to prove that the manuscript has been checked by a professional editor.
Formatting Guidelines
A set of guidelines prepared by a scholarly or scientific journal, describing how authors should prepare their manuscripts for submission with regard to aspects such as heading styles, references, titles, tables, figures, etc.
Grant application
A proposal or an application written and submitted to receive a grant (a non-repayable fund) for a specific project from a government body or an organization, foundation, or trust.
Hybrid journal
A hybrid journal is a subscription journal that provides an author with the option to publish their article immediately open access (OA) via payment of an article processing charge (APC), which ensures the Version of Record (VOR) is published as OA on the journal website.
In Press
Articles in Press means manuscripts have been accepted for publication but have not yet been assigned to a journal issue. They are also called “forthcoming articles.” Once the paper is accepted, author(s) can change its status from “under review” to “in press” on their CV and other documents.
Journal article
A scholarly or scientific research paper published in a journal within a specific field of study.
Literature review
An account or discussion of what has been published in scholarly journals on a given topic, including substantive findings and theoretical and methodological contributions to the topic; sometimes includes a new interpretation of old material or combines new with old interpretations.
Open access
The online availability of scholarly work via internet, free of charge to individuals who wish to access and read it.
Peer review
It is a part of the publication process for scholarly publications in which a group of experts examines a document impartially to determine whether it is worthy of publication. Journals and other publications use a peer review process — usually arranged so that reviewers do not know who the author of the document is — to assess articles for quality and relevance. Journals usually use double-blind peer review, so reviewers and authors remain anonymous to one another. Some journals use single-blind review where reviewers are anonymous, but they know who the authors are.
Publication bias
A phenomenon in scholarly literature, in which studies with positive (as opposed to negative or neutral) results have a better chance of being published, are published earlier, and are published in journals with higher impact factors.
Reviewer comments
Opinions, advisory comments, and suggestions offered by peer reviewers to the author(s) of the manuscript under review.
Rejection rate
In journal publishing, the number of manuscripts rejected compared to the total number of manuscripts submitted to the journal in one year.
Re-Submission
The process of submitting a manuscript to the same journal for the second time after it has been revised as per the instructions of the journal or the journal’s peer reviewers, or of submitting a manuscript to a different journal after it has been rejected by the first journal.
Salami publication or Salami slicing
A discredited process in which data gathered via one study is separately reported (wholly or in part) in multiple publications; considered questionable as it may lead to the same data being counted multiple times as apparently independent results in aggregate studies.
Subscription database
A database that can be accessed only by paying a fee. Most of the online materials that libraries provide free to their patrons are paid for by the library through a subscription. Because these databases are often provided through a license agreement, they are sometimes referred to as licensed databases.
Transformative Journal
Transformative journals are subscription/hybrid journals that commit to transitioning to a fully open-access journal.